1 Detail for the race groups (white, black or African American, and Asian) will not sum to totals because data are not presented for all races. In addition, persons whose ethnicity is identified as Hispanic or Latino may be of any race and, therefore, are classified by ethnicity as well as race.

2 The distinction between full- and part-time workers is based on hours usually worked. These data will not sum to totals because full- or part-time status on the principal job is not identifiable for a small number of multiple jobholders.

NOTE: Data exclude all the self-employed, both unincorporated and incorporated.

NOTE: Data exclude all the self-employed, both unincorporated and incorporated. Users are reminded that these data are based on a sample and are
therefore subject to sampling error; the degree of error may be quite large for less populous States. It is not possible to clearly determine whether
workers surveyed in the CPS are actually covered by the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) or by individual State minimum wage laws. Thus, some workers reported as earning an hourly wage of $5.15 may not in fact be covered by Federal or State minimum wage laws. At the same time, the presence of a sizable number of workers with wages below the prevailing Federal minimum wage does not necessarily indicate violations of the FLSA or applicable State laws, because there are numerous exclusions and exemptions to these minimum wage statutes. Dash indicates no data or data that do not meet publication criteria.

1 The comparability of historical labor force data has been affected at various times by methodological and conceptual changes in the Current Population Survey (CPS). For an explanation, see the "Explanatory Notes and Estimates of Error" section of the February 2007 and subsequent issues of Employment and Earnings, a monthly BLS periodical.

2 Data for 1990-91 and 1996-97 reflect changes in the minimum wage that took place in those years.

NOTE: The prevailing Federal minimum wage was $2.90 in 1979, $3.10 in 1980, and $3.35 in 1981-89. The minimum wage rose to $3.80 in April 1990, to $4.25 in April 1991, to $4.75 in October 1996, and to $5.15 in September 1997. Data exclude the unincorporated and incorporated self-employed. The presence of a sizable number of workers with reported wages below the minimum does not necessarily indicate violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act, as there are numerous exemptions to the minimum wage provisions of the law. Indeed, the relatively large number of workers with reported wages below the minimum in 1998-2006 includes some hourly-paid workers reported as earning exactly $5.00 per hour (about 1.4 million in 1998, about 900,000 in 1999, about 600,000 in 2000, about 500,000 in 2001 and in 2002, about 350,000 in 2003 and in 2004, 300,000 in 2005, and about 250,000 in 2006); to some extent, this may reflect rounding on the part of survey respondents.